A clothing manufacturer announced Wednesday that it will open a new ring-spinning factory in Rowan County and create 170 jobs over the next two years.

CanAm Yarns, a subsidiary of Gildan Activewear, will invest more than $50 million in the project in Salisbury.

The company is eligible to receive $1.55 million in incentives if it meets hiring and investment goals.

The average annual payroll for the project will be $6.1 million, or $35,882 per employee. The Rowan County average is $36,712.

Gildan currently employs 100 people at a yarn-spinning facility in Bladen County and 294 people at a distribution center in Rockingham County.

CanAm, which makes yarn for Gildan's knitting facilities, was formed in 2003 as a joint venture between Gildan and Frontier Spinning Mills.

Gildan recently acquired Frontier's interest in the venture.
 

A fresh produce distributor announced Friday that it will expand its operations in Rowan County and create 90 jobs over the next three years.

Freshouse II plans to invest $6.3 million in its facility in Salisbury, about 50 miles southwest of Greensboro.

The company will receive a $100,000 grant from the One North Carolina Fund if it meets hiring and investment goals.

Freshouse currently employs more than 115 people in North Carolina.

The average annual payroll for the new jobs will be $2.3 million plus benefits, or about $25,555 a year per employee.

General Electric's decision to consolidate operations in North Carolina and Texas will bring jobs to Mebane, according to an article in the Burlington Times News.

The newspaper reports that the number of new jobs would depend on production needs, current and future orders, citing Randy Jones, GE Energy's Culture and Integration Leader. GE now employs 275 in Mebane.

A company that makes wood products will receive a state grant worth up to $85,000 for expanding in Rowan County.

The governor's office announced this afternoon that Universal Forest Products plans to create 49 jobs and invest $2.6 million during the next three years in Salisbury, about 130 miles west of Raleigh.

The One North Carolina Fund grant, which must be matched by local incentives, requires Universal Forest to meet hiring and investment goals.
 
Universal Forest manufactures and distributes wood and wood-alternative products to the retail, construction, manufactured housing and industrial markets.

The state's cable TV industry is once again trying to quash what it deems unfair competition from local governments that provide their own TV and Internet services.

For the third consecutive year, the cable TV lobby has succeeded in getting legislation introduced in the N.C. General Assembly that would hamper competition from local governments. In the past two years the controversial bills got bogged down in legislative committees as supporters said that municipal broadband increases competition and Internet access.

The most recent incarnation of the bill, introduced last week in the state House and Senate, says it's contrary to good public policy to let a government agency compete with private industry for the provision of goods and services. 

What the legislators have in mind are super high-speed Internet services offered by the cities of Salisbury and Wilson. Wilson's Greenlight and Salisbury's Fibrant service offer Internet speeds 10 times faster than the current top speed offered by Time Warner Cable. Municipal broadband also offers e-mail service, phone service and hundreds of television channels.